Management practices for young calves have a major impact on both their health and growth performance during the rearing period.
A large crowd of farmers attended the calf information meeting that was held at Carnew Mart on Thursday (January 2).
The attendees heard from speakers such as mart manager David Quinn; Niall Kilrane from the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF); the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) dairy chair Stephen Arthur; and Dorothy Bailey, a vet with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM).
The event focused on a number of topics including the commercial beef value (CBV) and the dairy beef index (DBI), along with the introduction of genotyping for the national dairy herd and also calf health for the calving season.
Management practices
Bailey spoke on calf welfare at the event. She advised farmers to follow three key management practices of young calves.
Firstly, she advised farmers to teat-feed calves rather than using a stomach tube, and to ensure that they get at least 3L of high-quality colostrum within the first three hours of life.
She also said that calves should have access to water from birth, noting that they will not drink a lot – but that they must learn the behaviour.
After this, she touched on bedding in the calf shed. Bailey reminded farmers that calves lie down for 80% of their time.
“They feed, they play and they sleep,” she said.
“Where they are lying has to be comfortable. If you look at the calves and they are all lying in one part of the pen, something is wrong.
“There is either a draught or a wet area in the pen and the calves aren’t happy.”
You should ensure that calves are lying on dry bed, Bailey said, adding that farmers should not be putting straw on top of straw and that pens need to be cleaned out regularly.
She added that failing to regularly freshen up the bedding will result in a build up of ammonia, which will impact calf health and potentially lead to cases of pneumonia.
Lastly, Bailey spoke about socialising of calves. She said that the ideal group size for calves under two-weeks of age is four to six calves. This allows calves to socialise, she said.
Bailey also advised farmers to group calves for sale together as this minimises the stress placed on calves. She said that the health of calves in the first eight weeks has a major impact on how they perform later in life.
Records
Bailey also commented on the importance of keeping records on farms, not just for inspections but for animal health reasons too.
She advised that farmers keep records of sickness or disease during the calving season and then use these records to prevent the issues from happening in the future.